METAMORPHOSES BOOK II
with infected parts, so did a deadly chill little by little creep to her breast, stopping all vital functions and choking off her breath. She no longer tried to speak~ and, if she had tried, her voice would have found no way of utterance. Her neck was changed to stone, her features had hardened— there she sat, a lifeless statue. Nor was the stone white in colour; her soul had stained it black.
When Mercury had inflicted this punishment on the girl for her impious words and spirit, he left the land of Pallas behind him, and flew to heaven on out- Hung pinions. Here his father calls him aside; and not revealing his love affair as the real reason, he says: “My son, always faithful to perform my bidding, delay not, but swiftly in accustomed flight glide down to earth and seek out the land that looks up at your mother's star from the left. The natives call it the land of Sidon. There you are to drive down to the sea-shore the herd of the king's cattle which you‘will see grazing at some distance on the mountain-side." He spoke, and quickly the cattle were driven from the mountain and headed for the shore, as Jove had directed, to a spot where the great king's daughter was accustomed to play in company with her Tyrian maidens. Majesty and love do not go well together, nor tarry long in the same dwelling—place. And so the father and ruler of the gods, who wields in his right hand the three-forked lightning, whose nod shakes the world, laid aside his royal majesty along with his sceptre, and took upon him the form of a bull. In this form he mingled with the cattle, lowed like the rest, and wandered around, beautiful to be- hold, on the young grass. His colour was white as the untrodden snow, which has not yet been melted by the rainy south-wind. The muscles stood rounded
